TED Talks Daily

Digital public servant Amanda Renteria has seen that the millions of people who rely on government welfare services are often discouraged from seeking them out, frustrated and discouraged by long lines and unnecessarily complicated processes. At Code for America, Renteria is helping develop human-centered technology that "respects you from the start, meets you where you are and provides an easy, p...

A safe space to save money is life-changing -- especially for the 60 million smallholder farmers in West Africa (the majority being women) who often live on less than two dollars a day. Poverty fighter Anushka Ratnayake introduces her non-profit myAgro, which offers farmers a place to save small amounts of money and allows them to access those funds as they need them. Over the next five years, myA...

Election infrastructure in the United States is crumbling, says technologist Tiana Epps-Johnson, and, even worse, election officials are increasingly being attacked simply for doing their jobs. How can the country rebuild trust in its local and national elections? Epps-Johnson describes how the US Alliance for Election Excellence, a nonpartisan collaborative of election officials, technologists, d...

In Latin American countries like El Salvador, where local changemaker Celina de Sola lives, homicide rates are alarmingly high due to a vicious cycle of violence where people don't have an opportunity to heal from individual and collective trauma. With her team at Glasswing International, de Sola is hoping to break this cycle by equipping government employees like teachers and police officers with...

What will happen to the planet if climate change melts what's left of Arctic permafrost? Shedding light on this overlooked threat, Arctic geologist Sue Natali reveals the true danger of heating up the iciest place on the planet: the release of ancient carbon that will dramatically worsen our climate problems. In this urgent talk, she introduces a new initiative, Permafrost Pathways, and their work...

Indigenous communities have looked after their ancestral forests for millennia, cultivating immense amounts of knowledge on how to protect, nourish and heal these vital environments. Today, 470 million Indigenous people care for and manage 80 percent of the world's biodiversity -- yet their legal rights to these lands are inexplicit and subject to exploitation by illegal loggers, miners and compan...

“Human migration is both inevitable and growing. What are we as a global community doing to address it?” asks human rights lawyer Becca Heller, who believes that every refugee and migrant deserves a safe pathway to resettlement. Through her work with the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), Heller is showing how the power of the law can help displaced people find homes. By providing ac...

What happens when the data-driven capabilities of AI are combined with human creativity and ingenuity? Shining a light on the opportunities this futuristic collaboration could bring to the workplace, AI expert Shervin Khodabandeh shares how to redesign companies so that people and machines can learn from each other. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tattoos can transform and empower people, with some seeking them out to reconnect with their bodies due to scarring, physical abnormalities or the aftermath of a procedure or illness. Paramedical and body tattooist Becky Barker shares the art and craft of medical tattooing, explaining how this expansive field helps improve the quality of life for breast cancer survivors -- and anyone looking to re...

The secret behind medicines that use messenger RNA (or mRNA) is that they "teach" our bodies how to fight diseases on their own, leading to groundbreaking treatments for COVID-19 and, potentially one day, cancer, the flu and other ailments that have haunted humanity for millennia. RNA researcher Melissa J. Moore -- Moderna's chief scientific officer and one of the many people responsible for the r...

“It is time to close the funding gap for Black female-led start-ups the world over,” says entrepreneur Temie Giwa-Tubosun, whose company LifeBank delivers life-saving medical supplies to remote areas in Africa. Today, LifeBank operates successfully across the continent, but Giwa-Tubosun knows that barriers to funding prevent many other brilliant business ideas from blossoming. She highlights examp...

What's on Elon Musk's mind? In conversation with head of TED Chris Anderson, Musk details how the radical new innovations he's working on -- Tesla's intelligent humanoid robot Optimus, SpaceX's otherworldly Starship and Neuralink's brain-machine interfaces, among others -- could help maximize the lifespan of humanity and create a world where goods and services are abundant and accessible for all....

Building a pandemic-free future won’t be easy, but Bill Gates believes that we have the tools and strategies to make it possible -- now we just have to fund them. In this forward-looking talk, he proposes a multi-specialty Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization (GERM) team that would detect potential outbreaks and stop them from becoming pandemics. By investing in disease monitoring, research a...

To solve the climate crisis, we need to make tropical forests worth more alive than dead, says environmental economist Nat Keohane. Highlighting the urgent need to stop deforestation and the carbon pollution it brings, he details the work of the LEAF Coalition -- a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership that’s channeling one billion dollars into protecting tropical forests -- and shares thre...

Getting pregnant as a track and field athlete is often called the "kiss of death" -- a sign your athletic career will soon end. Olympic champion, entrepreneur and proud mother Allyson Felix thinks it shouldn't be that way. She tells the story of starting a family while fighting to change her former sponsor's maternity policy -- and paving the way for others to get greater protection and more suppo...

Africa needs new energy sources to fuel its development, but the continent should invest in renewable energy instead of cheap, polluting alternatives like coal, says climate inclusion activist Chibeze Ezekiel. He tells the story of how he worked with local communities in Ghana to halt the construction of the country's first coal power plant -- and encouraged the government to prioritize investment...

In this unedited conversation with head of TED Chris Anderson, Elon Musk digs into the recent news around his bid to purchase Twitter and gets honest about the biggest regret of his career, how his brain works, the future he envisions for the world and a lot more. (Recorded April 14, 2022) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has destroyed so much -- including hundreds of schools, where the country's children were forging their futures -- but it has not stopped Ukrainians from pursuing knowledge and curiosity. In a deeply moving talk, education leader Zoya Lytvyn shares her first-hand experience evacuating Kyiv and takes us inside the ongoing effort to continue educating children amid wa...

When women lead, bias often follows. Documentarian Robin Hauser dives into the dilemma between competence and likeability faced by women leaders, detangling the unconscious beliefs and gendered thinking that distort what it means to be a good leader. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ukraine is on the front line of a war between freedom and tyranny, says chess grandmaster and human rights advocate Garry Kasparov. In this blistering call to action, he traces Vladimir Putin’s rise to power and details his own path from chess world champion to pro-democracy activist in Russia. His message is a challenge to global leaders to rise in support of Ukraine -- and to choose life and lov...

"Life makes our planet an incredibly exotic place compared to the rest of the known universe," says astrobiologist Betül Kaçar, whose research uses statistics and mathematical models to simulate ancient environments and gather insights into the origins of existence. In this fascinating talk, she explores how a deeper understanding of chemistry could lead to the "secret sauce" for sparking life on...

WorkLife with Adam Grant, a TED Audio Collective podcast, is back for a fifth season! Organizational psychologist Adam Grant knows that you spend a quarter of your life at work -- in this show, he talks to some of the world's most unusual professionals to discover how to enjoy it. From breaking down "The Great Resignation" to identifying the work culture that's right for you, this season is packed...

"Music can unlock a frozen memory that melts into the seeds of our creativity," says musician Rosanne Cash. Reflecting on the power of memory, solitude and community, she performs "The Sunken Lands" and "Particle And Wave" and meditates on some of life's most poignant and bittersweet themes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In need of a brief yet illuminating lesson on the obsession with NFTs? Elizabeth Strickler breaks down the acronym and explains the fundamentals of non-fungible tokens, sharing how these digital assets are changing the landscape for artists and content creators looking to cash in on their creations -- in and out of the metaverse. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Given the scale of the challenge, the conversation around climate change is often tinged with doom and gloom. But climate tech investor Gabriel Kra thinks we need to reframe the crisis as a source of tremendous opportunity. He offers five big reasons to be optimistic about climate -- starting with the fact that many of the world's best minds are focused and working on building a clean future for a...